Despite
the multitude of briefs, opinions, and orders in this nearly
three-year-old case, before the Court are two motions
requesting an extension of time to pay the initial filing
fee. Dkt. 38; Dkt. 40. For the reasons explained below, the
Court will construe these motions as requests under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) to alter or amend the
Court's earlier dismissal of this action, coupled with
requests under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(b) for an
extension of time. The Court will GRANT the
motion docketed by the Court on July 31, 2017,
DENY as moot the motion docketed by the
Court on July 6, 2017, and set a new deadline for payment of
the filing fee.

The
Court begins by briefly explaining how this situation came to
be. In the reply brief filed by Defendant Federal Bureau of
Investigation (“FBI”) in support of its motion
for summary judgment, the FBI asserted for the first time
that pro se prisoner plaintiff Alexander Otis
Matthews had accumulated more than three
“strikes” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) before
initiating this action. Dkt. 28; see also Dkt. 35 at
1. The Court dismissed the case, Dkt. 31, but later vacated
that opinion on the ground that, after finding a three-strike
violation, a court should generally permit the plaintiff an
opportunity to pay the full filing fee before outright
dismissal, Dkt. 35. On May 5, 2017, the Court ordered
Matthews to pay the full filing fee on or before June 5,
2017. Id. at 10. Having not timely received the fee,
on June 12, 2017, the Court dismissed the action without
prejudice for failure to prosecute. Dkt. 36.

On June
19, 2017, the Clerk of Court received a money order sent on
Matthews's behalf purporting to pay the full $400 filing
fee. See Dkt. 37 at 1. The money order was dated
June 15, 2017, and sent alongside a cover letter dated June
16, 2017. Id. The money order was therefore placed
in the mail a minimum of eleven days after the deadline for
payment. Id. The Court held that Matthews had not
shown good cause for his late payment under Rule 6(b), nor
had he demonstrated sufficient grounds for relief from the
Court's final judgment under Rule 60(b). Id.
Accordingly, the Court ordered that the Clerk return the
money order to the sender. Id. at 2.

On July
6, 2017, the Clerk of Court received a motion from Matthews
seeking an enlargement of time to pay the filing fee. Dkt.
38. Matthews dated the motion June 30, 2017, the prison
stamped it as having been reviewed on July 2, 2017, and the
postmark is dated July 3, 2017. See Id. at 7-9. In
that motion, Matthews alleges that he had previously sent two
motions seeking an extension of time to pay the filing fee,
but prison officials prevented the Court's timely receipt
of the filings. Id. at 1-2. He states that in the
aftermath of his son's death, he applied for a furlough
to attend the funeral. Id. at 2. However, the Bureau
of Prisons (“BOP”) denied the request, and
instead placed him in the Special Housing Unit
(“SHU”) on May 16, 2017, while it conducted an
investigation of an “alleged irregularity” in his
furlough paperwork. Id. at 2-3. He argues that he
attempted to send a motion for an extension of time to pay
the filing fee while in the SHU on May 18, 2017, that should
have been received within the Court's original payment
deadline. Id. at 3. Matthews states that around that
time he also sent a letter to his family requesting that they
pay the fee.[1]Id.

Matthews
presumed that the letters had been sent, until at some point
during the first week of June 2017 he was questioned by BOP
investigators about the “irregularities” on his
application for furlough. Id. at 3-4. According to
Matthews, while he was being questioned, he “observed
in an open file being reviewed by [the investigator] the
letters to the Court and to his family that [he] had mailed
on May 18[], 2017.” Id. at 4. Matthews states
that he then sent a second motion for an extension of time to
the Court after this discovery, and included information
regarding the delay in processing his mail. Id.
Neither motion was docketed prior to the July 6, 2017
motion.[2]

On July
13, 2017, the Court ordered the government to respond to
Matthews's July 6, 2017 motion. Minute Order (July 13,
2017). In opposing the motion, the government does not
contradict any of the factual allegations made regarding his
mail, but rather argues “that he has no grounds for
reconsideration” of a final judgment under
Firestone v. Firestone, 76 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C.
Cir. 1996). Dkt. 39 at 1; see Id. at 1-3. On July
31, 2017, the Court docketed a further motion for an
enlargement of time to pay the filing fee from Matthews. Dkt.
40. Matthews dated this motion June 6, 2017, and it was
received by the Clerk of Court on June 12, 2017. Id.
at 1, 8. It appears to be the second of the motions sent from
the SHU that Matthews referenced in the filing received on
July 6, 2017. It makes the same allegations as the July 6,
2017 motion, but also lays out in greater detail
Matthews's request that the Court refer the alleged
interference with his mail to the Postal Service's
Inspector General. Id. at 7.

Finally,
on August 7, 2017, Matthews filed a reply to the
government's opposition to his July 6, 2017 motion. Dkt.
41. He notes that a motion similar to those he filed in this
Court was granted in a habeas action he filed in the District
of New Hampshire, and he reiterates his request that the case
not be closed because of his concern that starting the action
over again would deny him any chance of accessing the
information he seeks prior to the resolution of that habeas
petition. Id. at 2-3.

Before
turning to the merits of Matthews's arguments, the Court
briefly addresses the tangle of dates relevant to the two
motions presently before the Court. As noted above, the
motion received and docketed on July 6, 2017, Dkt. 38, was in
fact received after the motion docketed on July 31,
2017, Dkt. 40. That later-docketed motion was received by the
Clerk of Court on June 12, 2017, Dkt. 40 at 1, the same day
the Court issued its order dismissing the case for failure to
pay the filing fee, Dkt. 36. Further complicating the
situation, the dates on which the motions were received are
not in fact the dates on which the motions were filed,
because the “prison mailbox rule” requires the
Court treat a pro se prisoner motion as filed once
the prisoner turns the document over to prison officials for
mailing. See Blount v. United States, 860 F.3d 732,
741 (D.C. Cir. 2017). Neither party addresses when exactly
these motions were “delivered . . . to the prison
authorities for forwarding to the court clerk, ”
Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 276 (1988), but given
when the documents were received, it appears they were mailed
soon after Matthews dated them. Ultimately, however, this
knot can be left alone, because even construing the
case's chronology in the manner least favorable
to Matthews, he still prevails.

To
explain why, the Court begins by examining the legal bases
for Matthews's motions. Matthews has not clearly
articulated the Rule or Rules under which he moves to reopen
the Court's judgment dismissing this case. Given the
prison mailbox rule, both motions were filed within
twenty-eight days of the Court's June 12, 2017 order
dismissing the case, but after the June 5, 2017 deadline for
payment of the filing fee.[3]Compare Dkt. 35 (setting
payment deadline of June 5, 2017), with Dkt. 38
(requesting extension of time no earlier than June 30, 2017),
and Dkt. 40 (requesting extension of time no earlier
than June 6, 2017). For that reason, the Court construes them
as motions under Rules 59(e) and 6(b) in which Matthews seeks
to vacate the dismissal of the action and requests an
extension of time to pay the filing fee. See Emory v.
Sec'y of Navy, 819 F.2d 291, 293 (D.C. Cir. 1987)
(holding the treatment of a filing as a Rule 59(e) motion to
be “appropriate even though the movant does not specify
under which rule relief is sought, because [a]ny motion that
draws into question the correctness of the judgment is
functionally a motion under Civil Rule 59(e), whatever its
label” (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted)); McMillian v. District of Columbia, 233
F.R.D. 179, 179 n.1 (D.D.C. 2005) (in a similar situation in
which relief was sought from dismissal of a case for having
missed a deadline for showing cause, treating a motion for an
extension of time under Rule 6(b) as a motion under Rule
59(e)); see also Firestone, 76 F.3d at 1207-08
(describing a similar situation in which motions under Rule
59(e) and Rule 15(a) acted in concert to seek relief from a
court's earlier dismissal of the complaint).

A
motion under Rule 59(e) “is discretionary and need not
be granted unless the district court finds that there is an
intervening change of controlling law, the availability of
new evidence, or the need to correct a clear error or prevent
manifest injustice.” Ciralsky v. CIA, 355 F.3d
661, 671 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (internal quotation mark omitted).
Such motions “cannot be used to raise arguments which
could, and should, have been made before the judgment
issued.” Kattan by Thomas v. District of
Columbia, 995 F.2d 274, 276 (D.C. Cir. 1993), as
amended (June 30, 1993) (quoting Fed. Deposit Ins.
Corp. v. Meyer, 781 F.2d 1260, 1268 (7th Cir. 1986)).
Relief under Rule 59(e) is generally unavailable for
situations that “might have been avoided through the
exercise of due diligence.” Fox v. Am. Airlines,
Inc., 389 F.3d 1291, 1296 (D.C. Cir. 2004); see also
Ciralsky, 355 F.3d at 673. In situations such as this
one, the movant “must first satisfy Rule 59(e)'s
more stringent standard, ” before then meeting the
requirements of Rule 6(b). See Firestone, 76 F.3d at
1208 (describing analogous two-step analysis in context of
Rule 59(e) and Rule 15(a) motions).

Matthews's
motions meet the rigorous standard of Rule 59(e). The Court
has been presented with information regarding the delay in
its receipt of the filing fee that was unavailable at the
time it issued its order dismissing this case. Matthews
states that he attempted to request an extension of time and
to arrange for the payment of the filing fee within the
Court's earlier deadline, but was thwarted in his efforts
because of the prison's delay in sending his mail while
he was in the SHU. See, e.g., Dkt. 38 at 1-6.
Although the Court never received the extension request that
Matthews asserts that he delivered to prison officials
before the filing deadline, the government does not
dispute Matthews's description of the relevant events.
Dkt. 39 at 1-3.

That
the government “does not believe that Plaintiff will be
able to meet his burden on reconsideration, ”
id. at 3, fails to address the substance of
Matthews's motions. While the Court is unable to assess
fully the truth of Matthews's allegations, the timing of
the Clerk's receipt of the filing fee from a third party
and the Clerk of Court's receipt on June 12, 2017, of a
motion dated June 6, 2017-which mirrors what Matthews
described as having sent while in the SHU- corroborates his
account. Matthews's account of his efforts to comply with
the Court's order in a timely manner, which the
government does not challenge, weighs heavily in favor of
vacating the judgment.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
Court is further persuaded by Matthews&#39;s argument that
dismissing the suit and requiring him to start over would
work an injustice because of the effect such a delay would
have on other pending litigation.[4] Dkt. 38 at 6. Without
venturing into whether Matthews is likely to be successful in
getting the documents he seeks or whether such documents
would be helpful in his other suit, the Court agrees that he
has otherwise &ldquo;been timely and diligent in prosecuting
this action.&rdquo; Id. Given this litigation's
lengthy history and the Court's familiarity with the
unusual posture, the Court also agrees that requiring
Matthews to start from scratch by filing a new complaint
raises the possibility of further delay in the resolution of
his claims. Taken together, Matthews's motion is unlike
the more typical Rule 59(e) case in which an attorney's
neglect is found insufficient to warrant reopening a ...

Our website includes the first part of the main text of the court's opinion.
To read the entire case, you must purchase the decision for download. With purchase,
you also receive any available docket numbers, case citations or footnotes, dissents
and concurrences that accompany the decision.
Docket numbers and/or citations allow you to research a case further or to use a case in a
legal proceeding. Footnotes (if any) include details of the court's decision. If the document contains a simple affirmation or denial without discussion,
there may not be additional text.

Buy This Entire Record For
$7.95

Download the entire decision to receive the complete text, official citation,
docket number, dissents and concurrences, and footnotes for this case.